> It's funny you should say that, because Sam and I have been having an email conversation about "natural" writing lengths.

I find that the only length I'm terribly good with is the "extremely-short-story" (under five hundred words), which generally isn't a story (see any of the stuff in my writings for examples of what I mean). I've written several novels in my head, at least, but the process of articulating them - writing them down or typing them (which poses another question - why do we "write things down" and "type things up?") - exhausts my patience very quickly. That bothers me, as I'd truly love to get a novel written at some point.